Firewalker

by Allyson James

  I looked down at the T-shirt. Jim had worn it when he died, and now the bloody shirt was in his room. When did a murderer remove a T-shirt from a corpse and throw the bloody shirt into a closet? Had Jim somehow survived and was now walking around, alive and fine and thinking he was getting away with not paying his hotel bill? The vision might not have shown me everything.

  Or the magic mirror and Cassandra might have seen his ghost. Cassandra and the mirror were both very magical; they would see things that Pamela and other humans couldn’t.

  But in the vision, when Jim had climbed to his feet, he’d been breathing, if bloody. He’d not been a ghost but very much alive.

  The next alternative on the list left me stone cold.

  So, when did a murderer remove a T-shirt from a corpse and throw the bloody shirt into a closet? When the corpse did it himself.

  “He was resurrected,” I said slowly. “Jim was resurrected before he returned to the hotel. He probably didn’t even know it, was surprised he’d survived, but the magic mirror knew something was wrong with him.”

  Cassandra looked sick. “You mean resurrected by a necromancer? Can’t be. I’ve seen resurrected slaves before. They’re zombies, animated dead. Jim was alive. Breathing, drinking, sunburned, excited, and alive.”

  “Then a very good resurrectionist,” Pamela broke in. “Is that possible?”

  “Only if he were a god,” I said. A god.

  Oh, gods.

  I withdrew my hands from the T-shirt and was suddenly very, very afraid.

  Cassandra and Pamela left my office together, both of them a little dazed. I must have looked the same. I folded the shirt and stashed it in the bottom drawer of my desk. I clicked through all the pictures on Jim’s digital camera but saw nothing except innocent pictures of ancient ruins.

  Shock and the strange surge of magic left me nauseated. I stashed the camera and left the office, heading up the stairs to the third floor and out to the roof, where I stood in the wind and the sunshine.

  The storm was racing away, a few ragged clouds drifting in its wake. The air was sweet, washed clean by the rain, not charged with magic. I inhaled the freshness, letting it calm my roiling stomach.

  But my worry didn’t leave me. A complete resurrection could be done only by someone extremely powerful, and the vision hadn’t showed me who’d done it. I remembered the fast-forward part of it—how long Jim had actually lain there, dead, I didn’t know, and I’d seen no one approach him. But anyone who was strong enough to bring someone back to life would have the magic to stay out of any vision I could conjure.

  The fact that I’d been able to call up such a precise vision at all bothered me. I could read auras and sense past events if they were traumatic, but never with that clarity.

  I looked east past the abandoned railroad bed that marked the edge of town. The vortexes lay beyond it, swirling magnets of mystical energy, gateways to Beneath. The vortex Mick and I had sealed last spring was still there, but the energy from it was gone. Completely shut off. We made it a point to hike the mile or so to it once a week to make sure.

  I wanted to blame the vortexes for the Beneath magic that had been surging in me lately, but I couldn’t. What Coyote had told me in my dream I knew in my heart was right—the Beneath magic had been there since my birth, given to me by my goddess mother. But in the past, the magic had always been somewhat dormant, fighting my storm magic inside me, but doing no more damage than to give me a hangover.

  Now the Beneath magic let me kill hordes of demons in one stroke and replay a man’s death in living color by my simply focusing on the shirt he’d died in. It had also tried to convince me to catch a murderer by killing everyone in Magellan.

  I sat down, putting my back against the wall that made up the partial third floor. The wall was warm from the sun, but I still shivered. The Beneath magic made me feel powerful, unstoppable, invincible, and that scared the shit out of me.

  “You should be scared.”

  I shrieked, jumped halfway to my feet, and slid down the wall again. “Damn it, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  Coyote grinned down at me. “I like to make an entrance.”

  At least this time we were both dressed. Coyote wore his jeans and denim jacket, as he had at the diner, turquoise buckle, and cowboy boots. “I want to keep you on your toes,” he said.

  “Not when I feel like this.” I rubbed my temples, wishing this damn headache would go away.

  Coyote crouched next to me, jeans stretching over hard thighs. “Stop using the Beneath magic, Janet.”

  “It uses me. It surges up and tells me how to do things, and I just do them.” I gave him a hopeful look. “Can you teach me to control it?”

  “No, I mean stop using the Beneath magic. I don’t want you controlling it. I want you not using it.”

  “I can’t help it. . .”

  “Let me put it this way. Stop using it, or I’ll destroy you. I don’t want to—I’d rather sleep with you. But I will kill you if I have to.”

  I looked up into the face of a god. Coyote, the affable Indian who made the tourists laugh and was friends with young Julie, had faded. His eyes were dark and hard, the power in him unmistakable. He could squash me and not break a sweat.

  No, he can’t, my magic whispered. You have the strength to stop even him.

  Coyote’s eyes went black.

  I quickly held up my hands. “Don’t. I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  The way he looked at me made me want to run far and fast. “Did you resurrect Jim?” I asked him.

  Coyote blinked. “Who?”

  “The guy in my hotel that the mirror scared away. He got stabbed and brought back to life. I know you know who I’m talking about. Did you resurrect him?”

  “No.” His voice was flat. “I don’t believe in that shit.”

  “But you could do it?”

  “I could. But I didn’t.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “Nope.” He didn’t look much interested. But then, Coyote wasn’t always forthcoming with his feelings, except about sex.

  “You’ve been a lot of help. As usual.”

  “I’m not here to help, Janet. I’m here to keep the balance.”

  “And screw as much as you can.”

  A flicker of his usual grin crossed his face. “That too.” Coyote got to his feet, still the god. “Don’t use the magic again.”

  “I don’t know if I can stop it.”

  “If you don’t, I will.”

  Damn it, this was so unfair. I didn’t want my mother’s magic to be in me, but I hadn’t been given the choice.

  I opened my mouth to argue some more, but a fiery presence burst onto the roof. Mick was across it in the space of three seconds, and by second number four, he had his hand around Coyote’s neck and Coyote against the wall.

  “Leave her alone,” Mick said. His eyes were as black as Coyote’s, and fire flickered on the lines of the dragon tattoos.

  “Dragon,” Coyote said without changing expression. “You want to tangle with me again?”

  “No, I want to throw you off the roof. Leave Janet alone.”

  Mick radiated power, but so did Coyote. A fight between them would blow a hole in my hotel. Just what I needed, my hotel obliterated by a god and a dragon.

  I got to my feet. “Would it do me any good to ask the two of you to stop it?”

  “No,” Coyote said. “It’s sweet that he wants to protect you. Even as dangerous as you are.”

  “I don’t care if she’s queen of the damned,” Mick snarled. “You won’t touch her.”

  Coyote never lost his smile. I knew him capable of killing me and Mick both without blinking, but he just kept grinning. “I’ll go through you to get to her, dragon.”

  “You’ll have to.” Mick’s voice was ice-cold.

  “Just make sure she doesn’t use that crazy magic from the world below, and I’ll leave her alone.”

  Mick final
ly eased his hand away from Coyote’s throat. Coyote straightened his shirt but made no other indication that Mick had hurt him. He winked at me, turned away, and went back inside, whistling.

  Mick watched him go, his eyes still hard, before he turned to me. “You all right?”

  I leaned back against the sun-drenched wall. “He didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I won’t let him touch you, Janet, I promise.”

  “What can you possibly do against him? He’s a god.”

  To my surprise, Mick smiled his bad-ass smile. “Remember when he told you we’d met in the past? It was a long time ago, maybe a hundred years. I won that fight, not Coyote.”

  I’d been curious about the encounter since the day I’d learned about it. “What happened?”

  “Dragons don’t stand in awe of any gods but their own. Coyote was exploring—he likes to explore and get into other people’s business. He invaded my territory, and I objected. Strongly. I protected what was mine and ran him off. Gods are powerful, but you don’t mess with a dragon on his territory.”

  I folded my arms, the air cool despite the sunshine. “Where is your territory?”

  “Volcano. On a Pacific island.”

  I lifted a brow. “You’re a Polynesian dragon?”

  “Sort of. There’s volcanic activity all around the Pacific Rim. There’s a reason the volcanoes are named after gods.”

  “Because those gods are really dragons.”

  “No. There are gods. And dragons.” He smiled at me, his eyes becoming sparkling blue again. “That was my territory—still is. But this is my territory now too. And you’re my mate.” He stepped in front of me, cupped my shoulders with his warm hands. “I defend you, and it, against all comers. Including Native American trickster gods and asshole dragons like Colby.”

  I swallowed. “Speaking of Colby, where is he?”

  “Magellan Inn. I wasn’t about to let him stay here.”

  “Because it’s your territory?”

  “Damn right. He’s a dragon and my chief rival. It would be in his nature to try to take over if he stayed here. If he’s holed up in town, less of a temptation.”

  Mick was firmly in front of me, the wall just as firmly behind me. “You know, Mick, this hotel actually belongs to me,” I said. “I bought it with my own money.”

  His breath smelled of mint and was warm on my face. “Territory isn’t about who owns what. You should know that.”

  “And we’ve never talked about the connotations of this ‘mate’ thing.”

  “It means I take care of you.” Mick gently pried my arms apart and skimmed his hands to my wrists. “I defend you from your enemies. I keep you safe.”

  How nice it would be to melt into that protective warmth and let him ease my troubles. I didn’t think it could be done anymore, but it was a fine fantasy.

  Mick eased away from me, to my disappointment. “Coyote isn’t wrong, though. You can’t use the Beneath power anymore.”

  I blew out my breath in exasperation. “I wish the two of you would get it. I don’t do it on purpose. I need to do something, and the magic just comes to me.”

  “But what happens when you can’t stop it? When you need to fight something, and you end up destroying the entire town to do it?”

  I folded my arms, suddenly cold. The magic had wanted me to destroy the entire town to prevent another person getting turned inside out. And now someone was resurrecting corpses. A being who could do that could also commit that awful murder.

  “I’m trying to explain to you that I don’t know how I’m doing it. The magic comes, and then it just goes. Believe me, I haven’t done half the things it’s wanted me to do.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It talks to you?”

  “Something or someone does. It’s unnerving. I’ve resisted.”

  “What happens when you can’t?”

  “The hell if I know. That’s why I keep asking for help, damn it.”

  Mick cupped my elbows, stepping against me again. “I know, baby. I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe.”

  “From Coyote? Who keeps me safe from you?”

  He hesitated. We’d gone through this, his orders to kill me and his decision to not obey those orders. Hence the dragon council putting him on trial to declare him officially guilty.

  But I knew in my heart that Mick didn’t think the dragons wrong for worrying about a dangerous thing like me. The dragons’ ancestors hadn’t come from Beneath, as mine and most of humanity’s had. Dragons had been born of this earth, in fiery volcanoes. They didn’t have an ounce of Beneath in them, and they liked it that way. Long ago, they’d helped Coyote trap some of the more evil gods Beneath, to keep them from emerging into this world, and it’s no exaggeration to say that those gods would do anything to take their revenge.

  And here I was, the daughter of one of those evil goddesses, wandering the earth alive and well. Protected by Mick, one of the dragons’ own. No wonder the dragons wanted to put him to death.

  But Mick wasn’t any happier with Beneath goddesses and their powers than his fellow dragons were. He’d happened to start liking me—lucky me—or he’d have fried me a long time ago. I was alive because Mick had decided he admired my courage.

  “Can you answer me, Mick? What happens to me when you decide I’m too dangerous for this world?”

  His grip tightened on my elbows, his hands strong enough to break my bones. “That’s why I want you to try, baby. So I don’t have to make that decision.”

  “Don’t rush to reassure me or anything.”

  Mick touched his forehead to mine, eyes troubled, breath warm on my face. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep you alive, Janet. I swear to you.”

  I knew he would. That was Mick, protecting me from everything and everyone, even from myself. But Mick was telling me that the moment he thought the world would be better off with me dead, he’d do the deed himself, much as he hated the thought.

  I pressed him away from me. “I have work to do.”

  Mick stepped back, and I slid out from under him and headed for the door. He was allowing me to go; I knew that. I hadn’t won anything here.

  His voice sounded behind me, low and deep. “I won’t always let you walk away from me, Janet.”

  In spite of myself, a shiver ran down my spine as I continued into the hotel and shut the door behind me.

  Twelve

  The Magellan Inn was a single-story motel tucked into a curve of the highway right in the center of town. Assistant Chief Salas’s brother, who owned and managed the motel, recognized me and was happy to let me know that my friend Colby had booked into room twenty.

  I hadn’t bothered to tell Mick about this errand, and I’d borrowed Fremont Hansen’s truck so the magic mirror on my bike wouldn’t tattle on me. I knocked on the door of room twenty, which was wrenched open after a second by Colby. He was shirtless, his hair damp, as though he’d just come out of the shower. His chest and back were as covered with tattoos as his arms. I wondered if any inch of his body wasn’t.

  The television blared some satellite channel, which Colby switched off with a click of the remote.

  “So, did you come to your senses and leave that SOB?” he asked as I shut the door. “Course, you’d have to kill him if you have, or he’ll just drag you to his lair and keep you there.”

  “I’m not a dragon.”

  “I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass. Not that I blame him. I wouldn’t want to let you go either. Want a beer?” Colby opened the mini-fridge and took out a couple cans of Kirin, holding one out to me. I took it, and he snapped open the top of his.

  “Are you a Japanese dragon?” I asked, rolling the chilled can between my hands.

  “No, I’m a dragon dragon. We don’t have nationalities.”

  “It’s just that you have full-body tattoos and drink Kirin beer.”

  “So that makes me Japanese?” Colby chuckled. “With a name like Colby? Your name is Ja
net, not Runs-With-Coyotes or something. Not that Colby’s my real one; it’s just easier for humans to pronounce.” He sat down on the bed, taking a gulp of beer. “I was born in Japan, though. I still like it. Thought about doing some sumo wrestling, but I couldn’t put on the poundage. Flying around as a dragon keeps you lean.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He gave me an affable grin, but it held wariness. “What do you want, Stormwalker? Come to scold me about how mean I talked to Micky?”

  “No, I want to know exactly how you plan to help him. Plus I want to know why you’re willing to help him. You fed him your prepared story; now I want to know the truth.”

  Colby sipped his beer. He didn’t reach to put on a shirt, but his body was so inked it was as though he wore living, painted fabric.

  “Dragon trials are serious shit, little Stormwalker,” he said. “You should stay out of it, like Micky wants you to.”

  “I’ll be dragged into it whether I like it or not. I’d rather walk in myself, on my own terms.”

  Colby gave me a look of new respect. “You do have stones, girl. All right, here’s the deal. The dragons will allow a defense, not of the actual crime, but of the accused. Kind of like character witnesses, to state why they don’t think the accused should be executed for the crime.”

  “In other words, the ‘trial’ is more like a hearing to decide Mick’s sentence?”

  “Pretty much. If the defense happens to prove the accused’s innocence in the process, the dragon council can reverse its verdict.” He shrugged. “It’s happened. Once or twice in a couple thousand years.”

  I opened my beer and took a casual sip. “I take it you don’t hold out hope for that.”

  “It’s obvious that Mick’s guilty in this case. He agreed that he’d watch over you unless you went for the vortexes, and then he’d kill you. You did; he didn’t.”

  “I can’t be too upset about that.”

  “Plus he can’t solve the problem by simply killing you now.” Colby leaned back on his elbows on the bed, beer held negligently. “That won’t negate the fact that he should have done it the minute you tried to open the vortex. No, his only chance is to make them understand why he did it, and to prove you’re no longer a danger to the dragons.”